Posts Tagged ‘Jaws’

Trainspotting had a phenomenal effect on me when I first saw it. Being from a small town, it depicted the sadness that can hang over any small town anywhere in the world. The lifeless eyes, the shuffling to work, the gut -wrenching and soul cleansing humour, the sadness, the social life and the glibness with which death is met when it turns it’s ugly head. However that is where the familiarity ended as I was wildly unaware of the horrors of hardcore drug and substance abuse that can take hold of those, and indeed in later years our very own small town’s inhabitants. The film made me laugh, cry and staunchly opposed to injecting anything into my blood. Powerful imagery and good story telling that resonated then to a problem that was not as widespread as it is now. A sad indictment of modern society and the hopelessness that can engulf some poor soul. That being said it got me thinking of last friday’s release of T2 Trainspotting and that much lauded and often derided creature that is the motion picture sequel.

If you think about it the sequel can be traced back to a time before movies even existed and we were rocking around with just TB, plague and the printed word for entertainment and company. And further to that point, you could say that the idea of the sequel started with the bible. Now, you couldn’t publish a sequel to the bible to be fair. Unless it featured a ninja Jesus and some dinosaurs…. That could be awesome….. That would be awesome. Take my money, just take it.

But no, serious now. Books were the first victims of the sequel. Gulliver’s Travels (written by one of our own, Jonathan Swift… Up the Parish). Now this book was written in 1726 but the publishers of the novel rushed out many sequels and follow ups in quick succession. I’ve never read them but would you want to? The disappointment possibility is just too risky and would ruin the story. Oh no wait, that was done already by Jack Black. That film was the drizzling shits.

Motion picture sequels can be traced back as far as the insanely good and personal favorites of mine, the Universal movie monsters. Dracula, Frankenstein being the prime examples. The originals are stone cold classics, the follow ups? Lighthearted and harmless but ultimately shite in the bucket and a quick way to plough more money into the franchise and ultimately into the studio. Dolla, dolla, bill y’all!!

The 1970’s saw some questionable sequels and the arrival of the numbered sequel. Studios were bigger, audiences were bigger and the names were big enough to warrant simply putting the same title out with an adjoining 2 or 3 after it. Most notable inclusions being titles such as The Godfather II, The French Connection 2 and the sequel to the first commercial “blockbuster”, Jaws, a film so popular and critically acclaimed that some executive got a pay day for coming up with Jaws 2. If you haven’t seen it, don’t rush out and buy it. Buy some nice cake with the money, less chance of being upset.

So the sequel is nothing new to be honest, I am just hoping to myself that T2 Trainspotting won’t disappoint. I am not expecting wonders, but I expect a decent film and a genuine sense of story, character and the heart that lay within the dark bowels of the first film. At least they called it T2 Trainspotting and not Trainspotting 2 : More Drugs, No Trains. Here’s hoping!!!!